Playback is providing a deep dive into the careers of our 2022 10 to Watch recipients. This year’s cohort were selected from 217 submissions and represent a wide array of film and TV talent as producers, writers, directors, and executives. Stay tuned for additional profiles over the next month.

Mitch Geddes has set a high bar for the next generation of broadcast executives in Canada.

As production executive, original programming, drama and feature film at Bell Media, Geddes is part of a team that’s leading a new era of original Canadian content since the broadcaster’s executive restructure in early 2021. It’s a responsibility he’s handled with precision and the utmost care, according to his mentors.

“Mitch has an amazing blend of professionalism and creative instincts, which you can’t really teach,” Sarah Fowlie, Bell Media’s head of production, original programming, tells Playback Daily.

Geddes has oversight on a vast number of drama productions, including the CTV hit Transplant (Sphere Media) and upcoming titles such as Crave’s first original drama Little Bird (Rezolution Pictures, OP Little Bird) and the CTV private detective procedural Spencer Sisters (Entertainment One, Buffalo Gal Pictures).

In addition, he serves as the production executive on Crave features, including Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps, which recently won the Platform prize after its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Lindsay MacKay’s The Swearing Jar.

It’s no small feat. As a broadcast executive, Geddes says his average work day covers everything from handling day-to-day operations of a drama series or feature film; reading scripts to provide feedback; taking part in casting decisions; reviewing film pitches for potential pre-licensing deals on Crave; looking over cuts in post-production; and working with various other departments, including marketing and communications, to support Bell Media’s original content work.

Geddes says he “caught the bug for storytelling” in his high school days, creating short films with friends in his senior year, and decided to pursue a degree at Toronto Metropolitan University’s RTA School of Media.

He says he didn’t have any ambitions to be a production executive while studying in university, but a co-op with Corus Entertainment opened his eyes to the possibilities. “[The ability to work] across a varied slate of content and being able to dig into a bunch of different creative worlds and teams… really stuck with me.”

Geddes applied for a position as a coordinator on Bell Media’s original programming team in comedy and drama and joined the company in 2017, working with Fowlie and former Bell Media director of drama Tom Hastings, who now serves as the director of original programming at Paramount+ Canada.

Fowlie says Geddes’ talent was immediately evident in the way he navigated between comedy and drama, working on Letterkenny one moment and Cardinal the next. “He could move between those two worlds incredibly well,” she says. “He can shift from any kind of tone, and his instincts are amazing.”

From there he soon took on a dual role as a co-manager of the Harold Greenberg Fund’s Shorts to Features program with Alan Bacchus, which he says was a “really rewarding experience.”

“What was really special about that program was being able to nurture that first experience a [filmmaker had] with a network… being able to walk them through the process of what meaningful creative input from a network looks like,” he says, adding that he has carried that experience into what he does now in drama and feature film to ensure he can support emerging and underrepresented talent.

“Mitch spent years reading literally every scripted submission that came through Bell Media, from shorts to features and from dramas to comedies,” says Hastings, who calls Geddes a “quiet champion of emerging voices” and a “passionate advocate” for the artistic process. “He observed the journey from pitch to screen and developed along the way an impeccable sense of what needs to go into the dark art of creating film and television projects in Canada.”

Among Geddes’ unique gifts as a production executive is his deft touch in giving notes, according to Fowlie. “His notes are super creative and they speak in the voice of a filmmaker or a producer,” she says. “He understands all the shows he’s working on and the most effective way to get the feedback across, and it’s never based on ego.”

It’s a sentiment that’s shared by the creatives and producers Geddes has worked with these last two years.

Joseph Kay, showrunner and executive producer of Transplant, says Geddes is a “tremendous collaborator who has clear insights” when offering notes on scripts and cuts.

Rebecca Steele of Kind Stranger Productions, a producer on Riceboy Sleeps, says the film’s producing team felt they could “trust him to champion us throughout the filmmaking process” and executive Shim’s creative vision. “Mitch provides filmmakers with the space to dream big, balancing his encouragement with the honest and professional feedback we were grateful for,” she says.

While dual managing film and drama television is a considerable undertaking, Geddes says he sees it as a “massive opportunity” to utilize the “permeability of talent between those two spheres.” He gives the example of award-winning filmmakers Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Zoe Hopkins, who are the directors of the limited series Little Bird, as how he’s been able to tap into top-tier talent to staff up television productions and film sets alike.

So, where will his ambitions take him in the future? Geddes says he sees two potential paths for himself – one continuing the track as a broadcast executive, and another jumping into the world of independent production. “The entrepreneurial drive and the energy required to take on producing has always been fascinating to me — and being in the action, so to speak,” he says.

“In my opinion, Mitch has truly become what people call a ‘tastemaker’,” says Hastings. “Through hard work he has developed a keen aesthetic eye, he has a strong sense of the market and recognizes talent. Mitch will always be the guy to ask, ‘what should I watch next?,’ because he knows.”